Between those brightly-colored sinks, the pink kitchens, and Wes Anderson’s confection of a cafe, I have really been feeling like I need lots of color in my life lately. Looking through my stash of bathroom photos, I’m surprised by how many of them are this certain shade of minty, sea-glassy green. It’s not a color I think of myself as gravitating to, but I guess I do!

It’s funny, whenever I’m poking around looking for photos of vintage kitchens and bathrooms, the commentary on the ones I find on non-“designy” sites tend to run along the lines of “I CAN’T WAIT TO RIP THIS MINT GREEN ATROCITY OF SINK OFF OF THE WALL, HAHAHAHA,” and then of course on interiors blogs everyone is cooing about all of the original fixtures. I totally get not wanting to live in a time capsule, but I there are so many ways to update vintage bathrooms for better functionality and to feel more contemporary. Once those seafoam tiles are in the landfill, though, they’re gone.

I’m pretty sure this sink and tub are old, and I’m totally sure the floor and walls are new. Now, that’s not the tile I’d choose for my own bathroom, but I think this looks really good. It’s bright and fresh and airy and all of the things that people worry about vintage bathrooms not being. Of course, you’d have to make sure your shampoo and conditioner bottles match the tub and sink, so I hope you like Prell.

To close out this post, let’s take a look at what is arguably the greatest mint green bathroom of all time, the one in room 237 at the Overlook Hotel. The Shining has not one, not two, but three of the best bathroom scenes in cinematic history in it. Pretty amazing. Apparently Roy Walker didn’t want to make the Overlook appear to be from any specific era, so you’re constantly moving from the 1920s through to the 1970s from room to room, this weird vintage/futuristic juxtaposition that turns up in a lot of Kubrick movies. All that and a rotting corpse aside, though, that’s one helluva gorgeous mint green bathroom…

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I have a mint-green ceramic tub, just like the Tom Kirsch/Opacity pic…only it’s paired with white/gray marble floors (swoon!) and LEMON YELLOW, BLACK, and ORANGE tile walls….It…it’s the worst and makes me want to stab my eyes out. I think I’ve figured out a way to refinish the tile without pulling it all out, but I cannot tell you how much I dream of white subway tile. Honestly, with the marble and the mint tub that could be a really great bathroom….just not with yellow/black/orange. Ahem.

You can paint tile. It’s a little difficult as a DYI but I’ve seen it done and it looks fantastic. I don’t know why more people don’t do it. There’s no need to rip it out — you can even paint a design into it. Although you might want to leave one section of the tile as a reminder of ‘back in the day’…

I’d definitely paint tile if I knew I were going to be ripping it out eventually, but I wouldn’t consider it as a long-term solution in a wet area. There’s too much potential for moisture getting trapped behind the paint and causing the grout to fail. I’ve seen way too many mold-riddled stopgap “renovations” involving painted tile for me to be able to recommend it other than in completely dry areas.

GASP. That kitchen tile!! The way it wraps the doorways! Looks like cabinets and countertops and everything are much newer…good on them for not ripping it out when they renovated! (and omg that butler’s pantry!)

I know–can you imagine the work behind hanging that?? A lot of old Detroit houses do tile very well, in large part thanks to the Pewabic Tile (http://www.pewabic.org/) tradition. For all the “Detroit is the new Brooklyn” hype, there’s some things we gladly claim as ours! Hmm…could be an interesting destination for the next Anna/Daniel trip… 🙂

Back in my “renovating a victorian Philadelphia townhouse” days, a British friend was visiting and commented that he had not seen that much L’eau de Nil since post-war Britain. What we call Mint Green I guess everyone else calls water of the Nile. I loved my Mint Green bathroom. I regret that I had to leave it behind before the renovation was over to start a new life in NYC. Now I have generic rental beige. oh well.

I’m working on an exhibition about how Alfred Barr and Phiip Johnson brought modernism to the US (in NYC in 2017; stay tuned), and that first image…that’s my life right now! You brought to mind a conversation that the team has been having–the idea that most people don’t think of the Bauhaus and early modernism as being as colorful as it was, because the photographs of the objects were all B/W until much later. Interesting, no?

And you might appreciate this: I was doing some research on “good design” according to MoMA and came across this 1951 press release about one of the “Good Design” shows. Check out all the new players who became household names:

Thank you for this post. I am renovating our house (some kind of Victorian house but in France) and I have precisely a mint-green bathroom that I don’t want to rip off. I need some inspiration, and you just manage to give me some. I don’t know you Anna, but for years now (so a long time before we get our house) I’m reading your blog and well, thank you so much, for all the inspiration you give. If you want to have a look, we aren’t really in the decorating stage! It’s in french (by the way sorry for the mistakes) but we tried to put nice pictures in it: au33delarue.wordpress.com

I completely agree. I just renovated my 1936 bathroom. I started by removing ugly cream colored paint from my vintage blue- green tiles. I love the super saturated color every time I walk in my bathroom and I don think I’ll ever tire of it.

Back in the 70’s I had an office in an old psychiatric hospital (yes, they saved a room for me!) and the walls were mint green. Hated it until I realized that my black plastic square tables full of plants and my black rotary telephone were the perfect accents for that color.